Impacts of Civil Society Organisations and Transformative Solidarity
Lessons from Two Organisations in a Central Hungarian Village
Abstract
The study draws on the findings of a research programme examining civic solidarity initiatives, focusing on the visions, forms, and transformative effects of social solidarity. By combining sociological approaches on the measurment of the impact of civil society organizations with perspectives from social movement research, we examine two civil society organizations operating in the same locality but differing substantially in their organizational characteristics and fields of activity. We analyse their impacts at three analytical levels: (1) on the organizations’ members and volunteers; (2) on their target groups and the local community; and (3) on institutional actors, primarily local and national civil society organizations, as well as their impact on local and national politics. Regarding the nature and content of these impacts, we focus on two key dimensions: politicization versus depoliticization, and integration versus polarization. Through this analysis, we also seek to develop an empirically grounded interpretation of the concept of transformative solidarity.
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